Workout of the Day

Sep 24

Action is Good, Direction is Better

Have you ever had the experience typing on a keyboard of accidentally shifting your fingers off by just one key, looking at something other than the screen while typing, and ending up with lines of gibberish? All of the movements of your fingers are “correct,” but the keystrokes themselves are not as intended. All it takes is a small shift in orientation to turn every well-intentioned placement into nonsense.

Action is good, but it won’t turn out the way you intended unless it has some accompanying direction or proper framing to go with it. The yield of a well-intentioned action depends as much on its context and direction as on the action itself. And there are times where we need to look down, to make sure our fingers are in the right place and make sure the words on the screen are coming out correctly before we keep hammering away on action for the sake of action. If your screen’s continually filled with gibberish, maybe it’s less an issue of tapping your fingers away and more an issue of how you’ve placed them.